Saturday, 28 May 2016

Alice
In Wonderland, Tim Burton’s 2010 take on Lewis Carroll’s 19th-century
surreal classic, was generally given the thumbs down by the critics, but a
global box office take of $1.025bm for Disney, for an outlay of around $200m, ensured that
it was a success – and that a sequel was likely.

Now,
in Alice Through the Looking Glass, Burton has returned to Carroll.
This time, though, he’s one of the producers, with the directing reins handed
to James Bobin and Linda Woolverton returning for scriptwriting duties.

The
first film was messy, but still fun.

This
is messier still and has been roundly trashed by the critics, but still has
merits – although they’re perhaps harder to find.

Like
the first film, it’s “based on” Carroll’s characters, with Alice as an adult.

It
opens three years after the last film, with Alice – now the captain of her late
father’s ship – steering it away from Chinese pirates and back home to Blighty
after a three-year voyage.

This
fantastic escape gives time to re-establish that she has lost none of her
feistiness or bravery, and that ‘impossible’ remains, for Alice, a dirty word.

But
once back at home, all is not well, and she finds herself plunged back into a
fight to retain her chance for adventure and wonder against conventional
expectations and pressures.

Just
in time, Absolem the butterfly (formerly the caterpillar), reappears and leads
her to the mirror that offers a door back to Wonderland.

And
once there, Alice discovers that the Hatter is dying – and that only she can
help.

Absolem
is, once again, voiced by Alan Rickman – his last performance before his
untimely death at the beginning of this year, and it brings a lump to the
throat to hear his voice.

At
the heart of this film is the idea of time – you can’t get it back – and how
you must live every day to its fullest extent and make sure you never live to
regret any bad relationships with your loved ones.

And
if that sounds clunky, it’s because it is: twee, sentimental and hamfisted.

Keeping the world running

Some
of it – perhaps especially not being able to tamper with time and the dangers
if you do – are laid on with a JCB: and for goodness sake, do the writers think none of us have ever seen Star
Trek?

I
love the characters and I loved how the first film developed them. But even
though it’s good to see so many of these cinematic friends again, it’s hard to
care much about what happens to them – especially as the bulk of the film
drags.

We
get backplots aplenty, explaining how the Red Queen became the nasty character
we’re familiar with (and how she got her big head) and how the Hatter became,
well ... the Hatter.

Dysfunctional
families, eh?

And
there is Time himself, in the persona of Sacha Baron Cohen, trying to prevent
Alice from breaking time itself.

Now,
as I said, there are compensations.

In
the last quarter, it eventually gains real pace and a sense of tension and even
passion. Finally, you are drawn into caring what happens. But it takes a long,
long time.

If
there is a sense that Johnny Depp is pretty much treading water as the Hatter,
Mia Wasikowska turns in another enjoyable and solid (if not Earth-shattering)
performance as Alice.

Anne
Hathaway’s White Queen is as vague as before, but as we start to understand the
reasons for the relationship breakdown between her and her sister, the Red
Queen, the contrast becomes more understandable.

As
for the Red Queen, Helena Bonham Carter returns and adds some much-needed
energy to proceedings.

Baron
Cohen, once over an initial bit of clowning, is actually very good.

Incidentally,
how many times in mainstream Western cinema has a scene been played between
actors with three names each – Helena Bonham Carter and Sacha Baron Cohen?

We get a brief cameo from Sherlock’s Moriarty, Andrew Scott, who seems to have cast in order to bring that character to this film.

Wilkins tries to work out how to make things right

And
I did like Wilkins, Time’s long-suffering, robotic butler – played by Muppets
puppeteer Matt Vogel, with Toby Jones voicing, although why a character with
such an English name should look and sound German is a mystery.

The
biggest compensation is that it is visually superb – dazzling in places, not
least in the time-travel shots and in Time’s castle, where there is also a
rich, blue and gold palette that brings to mind Martin Scorsese’s Hugo.

And
the visuals are not harmed by being viewed in 3D: having only seen my first 3D
film 10 months ago, I’m certainly getting value from those glasses!

Alice
Through the Looking Glass is ultimately disappointing. In some ways, having
Burton’s name attached actually adds to the disappointment, because we expect such great things from him – and for a reason. But then again, whatever you may read or hear from the critics, it isn't some sort of cinematic version of the Titanic either.

And like its predecessor, it’s probably a fair prediction to say that it’s
hardly likely to be flop.

Sunday, 22 May 2016

There’s
little as irritating as snobbery – in oh so many walks of life.

Now
to be absolutely fair, there’s also a form of reverse snobbery – or relativism,
as it’s known – that asserts, for instance, that EastEnders is just as good as
Shakespeare, NWA are genuinely the equal of Wagner, and Minions is as good a film as The
Enigma of Kasper Hauser.

Now:
time for the declaration.

I
watch no soaps. I love Bill the Bard. I do listen to and enjoy some ‘popular’
music – but not NWA. I increasingly believe that Wagner wrote the most stunning
music ever. I love Minions – AND I love The Enigma of Kasper Hauser.

Both
are possible, without my remotely pretending that that means that the former is
equal to the latter in critical terms.

I
also like comics. And Thomas Mann. (And Günter Grass. And GabrielGarcía Márquez).

That doesn’t mean a Superman story is the same as a
Thomas Mann novella. But then again, what is? And indeed, few comics (well,
certainly not the ones I read) are like a Superman story.

My introduction to comics as an adult came in 1990,
when I was handed a copy of Alan Moore’s V for Vendetta to
review, and had my mind well and truly blown.

There have been graphic novels on my shelves ever
since.

Anyway, this weekend has been special: because yesterday
morning, the first issue of William’s Gibson’s first ever comic slid through my
letter box.

And Archangel is
every bit as slyly engaging as you would expect from the founding father of
cuberpunk.

For anyone who doesn’t know, Gibson is a superb and
very grow-up sci-fi writer, whose dystopian novels gave rise to the label of
‘cyberpunk’. They’re literate and philosophically interesting.

So, what do we get from issue one of Archangel?
Twenty pages in, I’m fully engaged. We have a tale of scientists from a dying
2016 Earth attempting to change history by sending people back to 1945.

I really want to know what happens next, complaining
loudly upon reaching the end of the story after 20 pages. This is actually what
you’d expect – and largely why the majority of my comic reading is done from
trades (collections of several individual issues).

But then this is a comic Event.

Of course, as with Gibson’s novels, there’s far more
subtlety involved than such bare phrases suggest. The characters are already
clearly beyond mere symbols.

The art – by Butch Guice – is seriously good. Plus
there’s a choice of covers for the first issue, just to increase the pleasure
(and possible torture) for collectors.

A page of Jaques Tardi's work

And that’s all I can really tell you at this point.
But beyond the opening of the actual story, the first issue has much to offer,
with sketchbook pages of character development, as well as pages through the
processes (both fascinating) and notes from Gibson himself.

That’s not, however, the end of this review.

In
recent weeks, my comic reading has also included the newly-published second
volume of the trade of Descender by Jeff Lemire and Dustin Nguyen.

This
is good stuff, taking us forward in a story about a sentient robot child, Tim,
who is struggling to stay alive in a world where all androids have been
outlawed and bounty hunters are constantly hunting for them.

It
was pre-ordered for the simple reason that the first volume made me care about
Tim, while Nguyen’s unusual (for a comic) art is also hugely appealing.

Also
entered into the recently-read list is the first part of Jaques Tardi’s The
Extraordinary Adventures of Adele Blanc-Sec – Pterror Over Paris (which forms the basis
of a Luc Besson film, in French with English subtitles, which is also worth
watching).

Featuring
the eponymous heroine – an archeologist and feisty creation of delightfully dubious morality –
there are currently four stories available in English, so these are rare and
great fun.

It’s always worth pointing out to any snobs that the French regard comic books as the ninth art.

Trees, by Warren Ellis and
Jason Howard is another trade first volume (the second is out this summer), and
is a complex interweaving of different stories from across the world, a decade
after vast, alien ‘trees’ suddenly arrived and ‘planted’ themselves across the
Earth – and then did nothing.

Another
fascinating story that gives few clues as to where it is going to go, Ellis’s
character and plot development are strong and the art from Howard is equally
memorable.

A page from Fables 2

Rather
older is Fables, a long series by Bill Willingham, working with various
artists.

The
overarching story deals with characters from myth, folktale, fairytale and
fantasy literature, who are driven from their home lands by the violent
Adversary and become refugees in New York, staying hidden from humans and
running their own society.

The
second issue, Animal Farm, with art by Mark Buckingham, Steve Leiloha and Daniel
Vozzo, largely takes place in the community’s out-of-town hideaway for those
who cannot maintain a human form or otherwise pass unnoticed among humankind.

And
yes, those familiar with George Orwell’s novel of the same name will find links
between the plots and ideas.

With
an approach that owes more to the darker origins of folk and fairytales than
Disney, Willingham’s series is a good illustration of just how grown-up comics
can be and would be a candidate for any list of best graphic novel reads.

Volume
one of The Autumnlands, by Kurt Busiek and Benjamin Dewey, is another rollicking
read: a brilliantly envisaged anthropomorphic world where magic is dying and
the elite are trying to save their society.

Unfortunately
for them, the secret efforts of a group of wizards to save the situation
plunges them all – literally – into serious danger.

I
have no personal axe to grind about comicbook superheroes – I’m rather fond of
Wonder Woman – but if you believe that the worlds of Marvel and DC are the only
ones in the comic universe, then think again.

Saturday, 14 May 2016

It
might nearly be time for the Eurovision jamboree, but the only Wagner I was
interested in on Thursday night was no inflated, blingy joke, but the real
musical deal – even with a work that is far from perfect.

The
Royal Opera House’s 2010 Tim Albery production of Tannhäuser is just enjoying its
first revival – and if it’s flawed, then that’s little surprise, since the
opera itself has serious problems. Yet for all its issues, the music is sublime
– and this production has moments that made me feel as though I were having a
religious experience.

First
though, a very brief outline of the plot.

Tannhäuser
is lured to Venusburg by the goddess Venus for a good time. However, he
eventually gets bored and leaves for the real world and Wurtzburg, in spite of
the protestations of the goddess.

Once
there, he’s recognised by old friends, who tell him that his old love,
Elisabeth, has effectively cut herself off from society since he left suddenly
and inexplicably.

He
agrees to compete in a singing contest – since he often won in the past and
Elisabeth loved the contests before his sudden departure.

However,
nobody knows where’s he’s spent the intervening time – and when they find out,
through the singing contest, they denounce him as a blasphemer and threaten to kill
him.

Though
Elisabeth is devastated, she pleads to save his life, and instead of death, he
goes with a group to Rome on a pilgrimage to seek salvation.

On
the pilgrims’ return, Elisabeth cannot find him and dies of a broken heart.
Tannhäuser then turns up, explaining that the Pope rejected his penance, and
saying he’s going back to Venus. However, now in heaven, Elisabeth has pleaded
for his soul and her pleas have been answered.

Okay
– set aside the plot. Wagner himself made it quite clear that he did not mean
it to be taken literally in a religious sense, but that it simply reflected his
own despair with the (then) modern world of the 1840s.

If
only he’d known the joys of social media and reality TV ...

Anyway,
if the plot is not divine, the music is. It almost certainly includes the best
music for choruses that he ever wrote. There are some stunning arias here too,
with plenty of evidence (it it’s needed) that he did NOT just write ‘shouty’
stuff.

So
what’s wrong with this production?

It's all about the sex – Venusburg

Albery
decided to incorporate a ballet into the overture – a choreographed orgy.

Now
it’s important to note that it isn’t actually completely out of place.

For
the Paris version of the opera in 1861, Wagner was asked to revise it and
agreed, on the grounds that he believed that success at the Paris Opéra was
important for his career. The requirements included having a ballet, as was the
tradition of the house.

However,
Wagner being Wagner, rather than place it, as per convention, in the second
act, he put it in the first, where it made some sense in the sensual world of
Venus. And it was, in fact, a bacchanale.

It
caused problems, though, since the moneyed members of the Jockey Club, who
expected to turn up late, see the ballet (they were often dating dancers) and
then bugger off, were peeved that they would either have to change their habits
or miss it.

Thus
they organised a barracking from the audience. At the third performance, the
uproar caused a 15-minute hiatus. Wagner withdrew the opera and it marked the end
of his hopes of acclaim at the centre of the operatic world.

He
made further changes to the version that was performed in Vienna in 1875 – and
it’s this version that is most often used today, albeit with the reinstatement
of Walther’s solo from the second act.

Wagner
was never completely happy with the work: he tinkered with it for the rest of
his life, and just three weeks before his death in 1883, his wife Cosima noted
in her diary that he was saying that he “owes the world Tannhäuser”.

But
all of this said, I do not believe that the ballet works.

First,
because the overture is beautiful and the dance interrupts it.

And
second, because in emphasising sex over anything else, it also ignores what
Venus makes quite clear is the other gift that she has given Tannhäuser –
godhood.

Not
only is sinful – it is downright blasphemous.

And
at the same time, it is also a reflection of the nature of the artist.

Artists
create – and within orthodox religion, an act of creation by anyone other than
the Judeo-Christian God is heresy.

There
are reasons that artists have long been outlaws in ‘civilised’ Western society.

Christian Geherer as Wolfram

Wagner
himself has been mistrusted from his own lifetime on by people who realised
that he created music that gave people an almost religious experience – people
who believed that that was close to daemonic.

I
had that in my mind as I watched, plus the obvious profane v purity theme, plus
the duality of human experience, plus the entire idea of setting up paganism
(Venus) against Christianity (Elisabeth is arguably a Mary substitute).

So
there’s a bit of context – and also offers just one illustration of why a
Wagner opera can be such an intellectually stimulating experience.

To
add to the drama of our visit, though, our eponymous tragic hero was Peter
Seiffert, a globally-celebrated Wagner tenor who recorded the role on a
Grammy-winning version with Daniel Barenboim.

He
was far from bad, but it’s fair to say he is not what he once was – few of us
are.

Unfortunately,
though, he couldn’t continue after the second act. Luckily, young (in opera
terms) heldentenor Neal Cooper (the nephew of legendary boxer Sir Henry, who
trod on my foot at a TV do once and was an exemplary gent in apologising) was
in the audience with his wife – and stood in for the last act.

Never
mind getting your costume and make up on, these singers have to seriously warm
up. It must have been chaos backstage.

But
he was wonderful, and has a really fine voice – and received a fabulous and
completely deserved ovation at the end.

I
very much look forward to hearing more of him.

After
the orgy ballet, the staging is essentially simple – we have a theatre within a
theatre (more to consider philosophically), but by and large, the music is left
to speak for itself and that, I think, is really how it should be.

Of
the rest of the cast, I thought that both Sophie Koch as Venus and Emma Bell as
Elisabeth were superb.

But
baritone Christian Gerhaher as Wolfram (who won an Olivier Award for his turn
as Wolfram in 2010) was the real highlight – almost certainly the finest
individual singing I have ever heard live; a voice of extraordinary clarity and
warmth and beauty.

And
the chorus – often offstage, giving the music a sense of
the ethereal – gave me goosebumps from straight after the overture and were simply superb throughout. But it was at
the act three finale that I finally had my first live Wagner religious
experience, as my entire insides convulsed and I found the tears unstoppable.

This
wasn’t sadness at the plot. It was a response to the extraordinary beauty of
the music.

Wagner
was a sorcerer. And more than a century and a half on, when it’s done well, his
music can still cast a spell that leaves pretty much anything else looking pale
by comparison.

So,
the 207th performance of Tannhäuser at Covent Garden (the first one
was on 6 May 1876) was certainly far from perfect. But as we’ve learned, the
work itself is not.

Yet
if I were still entertaining any doubts that I really ‘got’ Wagner, they were
blown away on Thursday night by a quite wonderful few hours.

Saturday, 7 May 2016

It
has been bad enough seeing the current Halifax advert: quite apart from the
apparent message that all you need to do in order to get a mortgage is to spin a wide
boy tale of suffering and accompany it all with a tear-jerking violin solo,
that it has Top Cat selling this new era of banking responsibility really set
my teeth on edge.

And
when I then saw what they have done to one of my childhood favourites in the forthcoming Top Cat film ... well, let’s just say that I’m not a happy bunny.

Like
most people, I suspect, I can be more than a tad precious about things that
were happy parts of my childhood.

The
day we got a colour TV, I walked into the living room after school to find Top
Cat playing – and was astonished to discover that he was yellow, with a purple waistcoat.

The
disappointment of George Lucas’s second Star Wars trilogy and the subsequent pleasure at the revival of the franchise under JJ Abrams, is testament
to just how much the original trio meant to me as a teenager and young adult.

But
I can get it very wrong too.

When
the BBC premiered Sherlock, I had a grand funk at the mere idea of it being updated, and refused to watch.
This was particularly barmy, since I’d originally loved the Basil Rathbone
screen incarnation, which included episodes of Holmes v the Nazis (as well as
that woefully inaccurate cliché of a dumb Watson).

Rathbone,
it’s true, had long been overtaken in my personal pantheon by the wonderful
Jeremy Brett, but when I eventually gave in and watched Sherlock, it was to fall
completely in love with the updating and Benedict Cumberbatch’s performance.

For
me, The Jungle Book has probably been my favourite Disney film since
childhood, when seeing it with my parents was followed, uniquely, by seeing it
again at the cinema with a much-loved great aunt. It is the only classic Disney animated film that I own a copy of.

I
have not, until now, had to clarify that by all this, I mean the 1967 Disney
cartoon.

On
first hearing that Disney was making a new version, I had something
approaching another Sherlock-style funk. But then, a few weeks ago, I saw a trailer on the internet and then again on the big screen. It was impossible not to be
intrigued.

The
discovery that at least some of the original songs were also involved this time
around provoked even more interest.

A
colleague with whom I’ve been discussing films lately asked whether I was
tempted – on the basis that he was, but remained unsure.

The
Other Half and I decided that the best way to deal with temptation is to give
in to it.

I’m
glad we did.

Because the
2016 incarnation of The Jungle Book is an absolute joy.

We
saw it in 3D – and that certainly added to the experience.

The
CGI is astounding. The animals are staggeringly realistic – they seem to have
weight and fullness; they move wonderfully. The jungle itself is also
beautifully realised.

Such lushness alone would not be enough to make this the hit that it is, but director Jon Favreau
has ensured thatit has heart by the bucket load.

The
characters are not sketches, but are drawn in depth and voiced by a top-notch
cast, including Ben Kingsley as Bagheera, Bill Murray as Baloo, Christopher
Walken as King Louie, Idris Elba as Shere Khan, Lupito Nyong’o as Raksha,
Mowgli’s adoptive wolf mother and Scarlett Johansson as Kaa.

The
relationships between all the characters have nuance and subtlety.

The
human element relies on Neel Sethi as the man cub – and the youngster turns in
a really wonderful performance that is engaging and utterly believable, without
ever drifting into annoying screen child syndrome.

I
haven’t read Rudyard Kipling’s original stories, but this has a sense of being
closer to those than to Hollywood: that the animals have their own ‘laws’ and
their own mythology adds to a hint of something mystical.

That
we have a back story for both Mowgli and Shere Khan is also a welcome development.

There
are laughter and tears, darkness and light here, together with moments that
only the adults will spot, such as the intended nod to Brando’s Colonel Kurtz
from King Louie, plus reverential nods back to the animated classic.

It
can be no surprise that, at the time of writing, The Jungle Book is topping the
UK film charts for the third week running.

So,
my childhood memories remain unsullied and, on the basis of this, I can now look forward to seeing the new Disney version of Pete’s Dragon (the original was never that great
anyway) when it opens later this year.

About Me

London-based journalist, writer, photographer and artist, with one Other Half and three cats.
This blog is about all sorts of things, but mostly reviews. My interests include comics and opera (and even comic opera), cats, tattoos and art.
100% personal. Non-PC. No 'party line'.
You can see some of my photography at http://amandakendalart.tumblr.com
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